U.S. Pat. No. 3,575,409 issued Apr. 20, 1971 and owned by the assignee of this invention concerns a carton feeder mechanism wherein motion of the cooperating parts is basically rotary in nature and without sharp and sudden changes in the direction of movement of the parts so as to accommodate high speed operation of the mechanism.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,991,660 issued Nov. 16, 1976 and owned by the assignee of this invention discloses and claims a carton expander mechanism for sequentially manipulating collapsed open ended sleeve type cartons out of a hopper and into set up open ended condition by a main feeder arm for sequentially engaging a lower carton wall to withdraw the associated carton from the hopper together with a supplementary feeder arm pivotally mounted on the main feeder arm and arranged with an end portion thereof adapted to project through an aperture in the lower carton wall so as to engage an upper carton face contacting wall thereby to move such wall away from the lower wall to facilitate setting up the collapsed carton.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,537,587 issued Aug. 27, 1985 discloses and claims a carton opening mechanism in which a first set of vacuum cups withdraws a collapsed carton from a hopper and swings such carton over into firm engagement with a second set of suction cups so as to condition the collapsed carton for a set up operation. In this patent, it would appear that transverse rotary movement of the first set of cups is tangential rather than radial relative to the carton to be picked up and that the cups would tend to slide along the wall of the carton in the hopper and thus might interfere with the appearance of the carton or with the efficiency of the set up operation. In this patent, the second cups do not move in a direction away from the first suction cups in order to set up the cartons.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,605,393 issued Aug. 12, 1986 discloses a carton blank removal erection and transfer apparatus in which a rotatable element is mounted on a shaft which in turn is mounted on an arm which is pivotally mounted at an end thereof remote from the shaft on which the rotatable pick up device is mounted. This arrangement apparently is objectionable because rotation of the suction cups tends to blemish the cartons and to effect an inefficient pick up operation due to sliding movement of the suction cups along the wall of the carton to be picked up.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,019,029 issued May 28, 1991 and owned by the assignee of this invention discloses a carton feeding machine in which carton pick up means is slidably mounted on a support rod secured at one end to a main drive shaft and arranged for its other end to protrude through an opening in one face contacting panel of a collapsed carton so as to engage and move the other face contacting panel in a direction away from the panel in which the opening is formed.
U.S. patent application 664,639 filed Mar. 5, 1991, now U.S. patent 5,102,385 and owned by the assignee of this invention discloses a carton feeding arrangement which withdraws collapsed cartons from a hopper and which swings such withdrawn cartons in an orbital path together with an oscillatory mechanism disposed outside the orbital path for sequentially engaging and moving a panel of a collapsed carton toward open position.